Making Montages and collages with Photoshop  

Photoshop’s most powerful feature is the ability to create layers. The layer masks, apply effects and other functional attributes of the layers can be exploited to create stunningly beautiful collages. In this tutorial we shall show you how you can use this feature to your advantage.

This tutorial is divided into three sections. The first section will show you how to make a simple collage of pictures. The second section will show you how to blend two images and the third will show you how to make a more complicated collage.

It is important to understand something about images before we begin. If you select small images for use in collages, you will not be able to blow them up as they will become pixilated. If you pick large images you will be able to resize them and manipulate them to your advantage. So, hunt around for fairly large images that can be put together to create a theme.

Open an empty Photoshop page of the dimensions 800 x 600 as shown in figure 1. This can be readjusted later to the size you require. Simple collages of the kind illustrated in can be done with ease by navigating to Image> canvas size and resetting the width or height of the canvas. However, you need to take care that you do not clip the image in the process.